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deregulation made the fire as bad as it is

The California water system is a dense web of legal contracts between public and private interests. Bad policy made the fires worse, as the central valley was transformed from an ecological paradise into a dried up scrubland. But the idea that California ever really had regulations to prevent these wildfires is naive.

one of the things deregulated in the LA area was the building of homes in high fire risk areas

Fires are running straight up to the Malibu coastline. High risk areas have been expanding with the repetitive droughts and the large agricultural developments of cash crops. You've got buildings going up in flames that were perfectly safe to live in 20 or 30 years ago.

Nothing the California state government had done up to this point was preventing the degradation of the local ecology. They're just at the end of their rope.